In light of new coronavirus restrictions in South Australia, Beer & BBQ: HomeBrewed is postponed until at least early 2021.

SPECIAL REPORT: COVID-19 ADELAIDE

On Tuesday afternoon, 17 November, Adelaide Beer & BBQ Festival announced on social media it would postpone its planned 2020 summer event, HomeBrewed, in light of new coronavirus restrictions.

HomeBrewed was the second Beer & BBQ event to be postponed in 2020, with the smaller, summer concept put together after the original winter Beer & BBQ event was not able to go ahead this June.

The summer event was scheduled to happen in the first week of December, just after the two weeks of new restrictions introduced by the State Government on Monday.

There has been no indication of how the restrictions will change after this two-week period, so the Beer & BBQ team made the call to postpone the event.

“Oh yeah, it’s just another day in 2020, really,” Beer & BBQ co-founder Gareth Lewis laughs.

“We would have started building by the time that two weeks ended, so we couldn’t really have, in good conscience, started building and have staff working on that Monday in a couple of weeks.

“There’s no point up until now that the messaging from the State Government or SA Health has been anything other than reactionary, so we’ve had no roadmaps up until this point, so I don’t think we’re going to have any from now.”

The Beer & BBQ team is currently looking at new dates for the event in early 2021, but is waiting to see how the fallout from the Parafield cluster plays out before locking any new dates in.

“We’re just waiting on the public advice that comes out, so until we nail down that date, we very much want to present this show and plan to present this show in the same format, just in maybe a month or two months’ time,” Gareth says.

In the meantime, Gareth says he hopes ticketholders will keep their tickets, which will be valid for when the event is eventually able to run.

“Like everything in the industry, we’re encouraging everyone to hold onto their tickets and support the artists and the event companies and the brands that they’ve bought a ticket to,” Gareth says.

It is a fraught business running events in our post-COVID reality, and it will continue to be so into 2021. Despite this, Gareth says it’s important to keep working to create events, while it is safe to do so and guided by whatever restrictions are in place.

“It’s a total shitstorm, but it’s the world we live in,” Gareth laughs.

“Unfortunately, that’s the situation we find ourselves in. This is what we do for a living, and we can’t just do nothing and wait it out for the next 18 months, two years, or however long it takes.

“Do we have confidence in the State Government to be providing timely advice all the time? Not necessarily. But we’ve got to roll with the punches, and we’ve learned over the last eight months that anything could happen at any time, and that’s what’s happened in the last two days.”

For more information, connect with the Adelaide Beer & BBQ Festival on Facebook, Instagram, or via the website.